


Sharp Objects

by Overlithe



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlithe/pseuds/Overlithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Girl!Zuko AU. Prince Ozai’s daughters had always been the girls, but even when you’ve been bound together all your life, ties can change when the world turns out to be full of sharp objects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Girls

**Author's Note:**

> **Characters/Pairing(s):** Zuko, Azula, most of the other characters eventually; the story is primarily gen, but except background pairings of all varieties (f/f, f/m, m/m, etc).  
>  **Author’s Note:** I need more AUs to work on like I need pneumonic plague, but this idea grabbed me (since I think Zuko being female would alter the family dynamics in important ways and things would snowball from there into all kinds of interesting possibilities) and so here we are. I am posting this as I go along, which is a novel experience for me as it comes to multi-chapter stories, but hopefully the updates won’t be too infrequent. (Also, I’ve been having some serious problems in my wrist joints for several weeks now, so I apologise in advance if this contains more stray typos than usual.) With all that said, on with the show and I hope you enjoy the story!

                                                                                                    

** Sharp Objects **

**Chapter One: The Girls**

                                                                                                    

They had always been the girls.

Once or twice Zumi wondered about that. She was older by a year and almost six months, but that didn’t seem to matter much when they looked so much alike. People didn’t really notice the difference in height, not when they were faced with two girls with the same nearly-black hair and eyes the same shade of dark amber. Wearing the same scarlet clothes and with the same bangs, twin gold pieces in their topknots.

And they were always the girls.

‘I will take the girls down to the beach,’ father would say when they holidayed in Ember Island, and Zumi and Azula would march down in identical bathing suits, holding identical bright red buckets and miniature bright red shovels.

‘My bucket’s better,’ Azula said as she filled her bucket with wet, closely-packed sand.

Zumi rolled her eyes. ‘They’re _the same_.’

‘Well, I’m making really important buildings,’ Azula snapped, and carefully deposited another tower of sand next to the ones she’d already assembled.

Zumi ignored her and went back to staring at the crab-snails the tide had brought in.

‘Come on, girls, let’s get you in your Spring Festival clothes,’ mother would say. Zumi stayed still as mother brushed her hair, making it crackle like a freshly lit fire bowl, and remained silent even as her scalp was tugged as mother braided and twisted the hair into place. When it was done, ruby eyes looked at her in the mirror, winking in her coiled locks.

When it was Azula’s turn, she squirmed, then glanced at her older sister and turned still, a creature in a fable who’d been turned into stone. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling,’ Ursa said when she drove in a bird-eyed pin too deep.

‘I didn’t even notice, mother,’ Azula said, and threw a defiant look at Zumi. When they were both ready, Azula tugged on the gilded fire lily hanging on her chest and said, in a whisper too low for mother to hear, ‘The Spring Festival is so stupid.’

‘Why is it stupid?’

Azula let out a dramatic sigh. ‘Because we don’t _have_ a spring, dum-dum.’ She toyed with the ribbons in her robe. ‘It’s just an excuse to eat saffron cake.’

‘You said that like it’s a bad thing,’ Zumi said, and even though Azula opened her mouth to speak again, she instead said nothing and the two of them walked onwards together in their heavy brocaded robes, the hems whispering on the ground behind them.

They were the girls when it came to presents, given to them equally on both their birthdays, so that for a while Zumi had thought you celebrated your birthday twice a year and Azula had spent a whole month making fun of her over it once she had found out. Boxes presented on trays, wrapped in red rice paper so fine you could part it with your fingers. Dolls with braids made of real hair, tiny animals sculpted from sandalwood, miniature tea cups and canopied beds. They played in the corner of their bedroom—Zumi had heard mother said that there was no point in separating the girls while they were so young, and when they were out of earshot Azula had added “and we’re just the children of the second-born prince anyway”.

Azula always played make-believe battles. She would assemble regiments of wooden koala-sheep and turtle-ducks, and have them besiege the model palace laid out by the wall.

Zumi would fashion helmets from toy teacups, and siege engines from toy chairs, and look at the dollhouse palace splayed out on the floor, its wings and rooms folded open and dissected like the diagrams in writing books.

‘How come we always invade the palace?’ she asked as Azula hung a chain of gliding monkeys from one of the dragontooth spires. ‘We _live_ in the palace.’

‘Because someone else took over the palace and we’re conquering it again,’ Azula said, making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world.

‘How did they take over the palace? All the Imperial Guards would stop them before they even got in.’ She refrained from asking how the gliding monkeys would help.

Azula didn’t reply. Instead a corner of her mouth curled up in that sharp little smirk that said she knew something you didn’t. ‘There are all kinds of ways to get into things.’ She rearranged her platoon of monkeys, looked up. ‘ _Secret_ ways.’

‘That’s silly,’ Zumi said, and looked at the spot on the floor where she had mixed a family of carved camelephants with wooly lorises made of grey stone, their eyes glinting pinpricks of amber. Sometimes she found the miniature animals more interesting that the make-believe battles Azula came up with, like she did the times when they would sit by mother, the air drowsy with tea steam, and Ursa would read the great Fire Nation classics to them. Zumi mostly liked it, even if a lot of the poems were full of coiled lines she didn’t understand. Azula would just sit through them in shuttered silence, and only perked up when mother read the tale of some great Fire Nation victory.

But sometimes Zumi did wonder why mother would always skip from departing ships to scarlet banners aloft in triumph.

‘Secret means nobody knows about it.’ _Not even you_ , she didn’t bother to add.

‘No, secret means most people don’t know about it,’ Azula said with an exasperated frown. It was obvious she didn’t count herself in that inferior category.

Zumi didn’t answer, but her skin was beginning to itch by the time Azula finally spoke again. ‘I’ll show you if you don’t believe me,’ her sister said.

‘Secret ways to get into the palace? When would you have time to find them?’ It wasn’t an entirely pointless question. They were never apart for very long.

Azula stood up, her knee flipping one of the camelephants onto its side. ‘Come on, then.’

Zumi waited for a moment before she got up and followed her sister, making sure to keep at least two steps behind. But Azula didn’t have some prank prepared, and she didn’t go very far—she only walked to the other corner of the room, where a finely carved wooden screen stood, curls of reddish latticework buffed to the sheen of flame. Azula ducked into the space between the screen and the wall. There was a creak and a groan of metal.

Even cloaked by the screen and the shadows, Zumi could tell one of the panels in the wall had slid to one side, revealing a hole.

She stepped around the screen, until she was shoulder to shoulder with her sister. Azula pushed back a little, but Zumi ignored her.

The hole—a rectangular opening that was just perfect for them but would make a grown-up have to crouch at least a little—opened into a corridor lined with dark stone. Spiderfly webs fluttered in a draught that smelled of dust, and wax, and cold.

‘Where does this go?’ Zumi asked. Her voice, like the light, was dampened by the secret passage’s walls.

‘ _Everywhere_.’ Azula’s voice wasn’t. She turned to Zumi, and her expression softened the barest fraction. ‘There is something big underground. There are corridors that don’t lead anywhere, but that’s just what they want you to think. If you knock on the walls and the floor you can hear an echo. That means they’re hollow,’ she added in a drawl.

Zumi inched a little closer to the opening, enough for the—

_cobwebs_

—draught to brush her face. The stone in the secret corridor was dark grey and rough, unlike any she’d seen in the palace, even in sculptures turned blind and mossy by time, and for a moment she was sure that if she stepped inside she would be stepping into some alien world. A maze that lay cheek-to-jowl with the palace’s daylight world, but was full of shadows and stairs that spiralled down to nowhere.

No, she was being silly. She was almost eight, which made her a big girl.

Certainly not someone who was afraid of _monsters_.

‘Go on,’ Azula said.

Zumi’s gaze remained fastened to the secret passage, but she didn’t move. She was sure the cold air blowing in from the dark had just shifted a little, like the breath of a living thing.

‘Unless you’re _scared_.’ Azula said the last word in a sing-song voice.

Zumi bristled. ‘I’m not _scared_.’

‘ _I_ bet you can’t even walk to the end of the corridor without getting scared and running back.’

‘Shut up,’Zumi said, and tried to think of something to tell her sister. Azula had been the first to push her stuffed koala-sheep away when mother put them to bed at night, saying that she was big now and didn’t need to sleep with some stupid baby toy. Only she still stuck her thumb in her mouth she was asleep—Zumi would sometimes stir awake to see her sleeping sister sucking away at her thumb like a rooting kid-piglet.

Heat flowed into Zumi’s face. No, Azula wouldn’t like being told about her thumb-sucking one little bit—she hated looking like a little child, and especially giving grown-ups any excuse to treat her like one—but how could Zumi use it? She’d just trip over her own tongue, and then Azula would find a way to throw the words back at her, twice as sharp.

Instead she just took another half step towards the hole in the wall, until the tip of her foot was inside the secret passage. She put a hand on the opening’s lip. The stone felt cold and rough under her fingers, and when she pulled them back they were furry with dust. ‘Gross,’ she said. She tried to wipe the dust away, but a grey smear remained. ‘You just want me to get all dirty so mother will tell me off.’

Azula produced a shrug as exaggerated as those of the actors in the Ember Island theatre. ‘Yes, that must be it,’ she said, and brushed past Zumi. ‘It can’t _possibly_ be that you’re too much of a baby to go in there.’ She stepped around the screen, and when Zumi looked at her, her face was covered in slats and curlicues of shadow. ‘But suit yourself,’ Azula added, and strode towards the other side of the room.

‘I’m not,’ Zumi said. She could almost see the words hanging in the air, ringing like a struck gong. On the other side of the screen, Azula stopped, turned around.

Zumi slid her foot all the way into the opening in the wall, until the darkness had swallowed her up to the ankle. ‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, and some little part of her was a little surprised at how hard her voice sounded.

Surprised and pleased.

She didn’t bother with turning around to see her sister’s face. She didn’t even take a deep breath. Instead she just plunged forward into the passage.

It was like that first dive into the ocean whenever they were at the beach. The cold stung her. For a few seconds, she was almost blind. She walked on, and a small red flame bloomed in her hand.

The inside of the tunnel smelled like a cupboard unaired for too long, and the ceiling was much higher that she’d imagined, tall enough for someone standing on a komodo rhino to ride through comfortably. Orange light from her flame dripped down the walls. Zumi looked towards the end of the corridor, which now looked much farther away than it had before. But that couldn’t be possible, could it? Maybe what had looked like a wall when seen from the room was actually just… something else entirely.

Something skittered behind her. She turned around but there was nothing, of course, only the dust-smeared floor and the dark walls. _It’s probably just an elephant-rat_ , she thought, and looked forward again. These passages were probably full of vermin and bugs and things. She batted away a cobweb, ghostly and sticky, and kept moving. Ahead of her, the end of the tunnel wavered in the firelight. It should be getting closer by now, shouldn’t it? Her footsteps sounded too soft and too loud at the same time. The corridor couldn’t be more than twenty yards long. She had to be nearly there.

A breath of cold put out her flame and she nearly stumbled. Fire burst in her fingertips again. For a moment all she could see was an open maw and she jerked back. But no, it was just another corridor, branching off from the first. She looked down into it, at a flight of stairs that plunged—

_endlessly_

—into the dark, far beyond the little bubble of light. Dust whitened the edges of the steps, but the middle was cleaner, as if someone walked up and down them all the time.

Or some _thing_. Something slipping through the palace’s hidden veins, scaly and cold.

 _Stop it_. She turned away from the stairs and strode to the end of the corridor—it wasn’t nearly as far as it’d seemed—until she could touch the grey wall in front of her. There was nothing scary about it, of course. It was just some stupid wall. She touched it; the stone felt reassuringly rough.

Then something whispered against her neck and tugged at her sleeve.

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

In father’s study, they weren’t the girls.

Even though father was only the second-born Prince, not the Crown Prince and much less the Fire Lord, the place intimidated her a little even now. When she was six her voice had shrunk all the way to the bottom of her throat and the ruby gaze of dragons felt heavy on her skin. Father had her and Azula sit across from him at the writing desk, as if they were grown-ups. Zumi kept her hands carefully folded on her lap, sure that if she did otherwise she’d accidentally upend an inkpot all over the map that took up most of the desk, reds and yellows burnished by sun and firelight.

‘Do you know, Zumi,’ father began, and she perked up, ‘that you are the first girl to be born to the royal family in over one hundred and fifty years? The last one before you died still an infant, and so the very fact of your birth is lucky.’

Zumi didn’t really understand how that followed, but father’s voice was deep and soothing like the droning of scorpion-bees, and so she just nodded and said ‘Yes, father.’ Out of the corner of her eye she could see Azula stare, and shift impatiently. Ozai turned to her.

‘And you, Azula, you started firebending at an age as prodigiously young as Fire Lord Azulon himself.’ He pushed forward a book that had been lying under his hands. Sunlight careened off a stylised golden flame on the cover and Zumi batted away her wondering about what “prodigiously” meant—it sounded like something wonderful, but also strange, and a little scary.

‘It has been the duty of royal women to serve and command our nation. Greatness flows in your veins. You must show yourselves worthy of it.’

Zumi nodded. Father opened the book, let its pages flip under his fingers. Black ink was animated for a few seconds, human figures blurred into each other, bloodied by drawings of flames.

‘Those are advanced firebending forms,’ Zumi blurted out, then clamped her mouth shut. Too late, of course, but father didn’t seem to mind.

‘Quite.’ The flipping pages stilled on a series of drawings showing a complicated sequence of kicks and turns. The firebender was a woman, Zumi noticed. ‘This is the Jaguar-boar’s Step,’ he said. ‘Study it.’ Both girls leaned towards the book, Azula going out of her way to inch forward a little more than her sister. Zumi looked at the pictures, sure that this was some kind of test and that she was already failing it. The weight of the sunlight streaming in from the windows and the smell of the scented oil in the flame bowls were making her drowsy, and the form in the page was eight steps long, much more complicated than the basic forms she’d learned so far. When her father closed the book, the moves quickly jumbled in her mind. She was sure she’d barely had enough time to memorise the first three steps.

‘Do you think you can demonstrate it?’ father said.

Azula nearly bounced to her knees. ‘I can!’

Zumi looked up. ‘Mother says we don’t—’ The words fizzled out on her tongue. She’d heard mother said that thankfully the two of them had no need to learn any more firebending than that necessary for self-defence; how lucky that they were the daughters of a second Prince and not the Fire Lord.

Another time, when the two of them had been playing, Azula had declared herself the commander of the Fire Nation forces. ‘You can be the commander of the Earth Nation, and then we can fight,’ she added, sounding like she was dispensing an enormous favour.

‘I don’t want to be the Earth Nation commander,’ Zumi said. ‘I want to be in the Fire Nation too.’

‘There’s only the two of us,’ Azula said in a stinging tone. ‘Maybe I’ll let you help me when I do it for real.’

Mother’s chuckle was almost drowned out by the quacks of the turtle-ducks. ‘What a thing to say, Azula,’ she said. Her tone was not unkind, but for a split-second Zumi was sure that her mother’s face was a blank mask, a hard shell over flesh. But it vanished in an instant, and Ursa was again the warm, lotus-scented body that cuddled her close, the hands that gently untangled her hair, the lips that kissed her goodnight or hummed a song. Zumi was sure she had just imagined the other one. ‘You two won’t be commanding any armies, thank goodness. But I am sure you’ll be a great firebending teacher,’ mother had added, scattering Zumi’s thoughts, and set her book aside to pat Azula’s head.

‘Ah, yes,’ father said, and rose to his feet in one fluid move. The memory winked out. Both girls got to her feet, Azula smooth, Zumi nearly stepping on her own hem. ’I am afraid you will encounter people who will think of you as lesser. Those who cannot bear educated women, much less women who can best them in combat. Do you two realise that there are parts of the world so barbaric that you two, for reason of your sex, would be allowed no skills other than those necessary to serve men and bear their children?’ Zumi swallowed a small lump in her throat and shook her head, even though she wasn’t quite sure about what was involved in that last thing father had mentioned. ‘And some places so decadent that they boast of having wives that need no other purpose than that of a beautiful vase, or a pretty bird in a cage. Something you can afford to cast aside or replace when it no longer serves its purpose. Or when it breaks.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Azula said, and lowered her head quickly, but father didn’t rebuke her for the outburst.

‘That’s… why we’re fighting the war, isn’t it?’ Zumi said. Her gaze didn’t go further than father’s collar. ‘To make things better.’

‘Yes,’ father said, and stepped around the desk. Zumi turned around in his wake and Azula, she couldn’t help but notice, did the same. ‘Though even in our nation, there has been some corruption of our great traditions. You will still find those who do not believe you are fit for the greatness you’ve inherited.’ He turned to look at Zumi. ‘Those who will be looking for any flaw, any weakness, any excuse to dismiss you.’ She wanted to lower her eyes, but her gaze was hooked in his. Her body felt trapped in warm, invisible amber. ‘Of course, maybe _that_ is what you want.’ The golden eyes darkened. ‘Maybe you find greatness too demanding. Maybe you are too weak and foolish for it and would prefer that comfortable cushion in that beautiful cage. Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ Zumi said hurriedly, but it didn’t matter what she was saying. Her father was something beautiful and powerful, and she thought of the dragons in the stories mother told, scales turned to fire by the sun, eyes of molten gold heavy with magic that could look into your very soul and hold you still and in thrall, happy to march into a mouth ringed with fangs.

Only it—

_was_

—wasn’t scary. It was comfortable, reassuring, even. She desperately wanted to please him. To have that little half-smile come again, the cloud dispelled.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You want strength, then. Excellence instead of mediocrity. Good. Do the form.’

She took a step back, sure that she couldn’t even remember the first step. ‘I…’

‘I can do it!’ Azula said. ‘I can do the form, father.’ She cast a sharp glance at Zumi.

‘Well, then.’ Ozai put a hand on Zumi’s shoulder and ushered her aside, clearing a space on the floor. ‘Let’s see it. Show me the motions only—we wouldn’t want to set a rare scroll on fire, would we?’

‘No,’ Azula said with a smirk, and Zumi was sure this was some private joke between the two, one she would never be privy to.

Azula stepped to the middle of the floor, raised her arms, and begun. Jab, spin, kick, side-step, spin. She didn’t really need the fire: her motions were every bit as quick and blinding. She moved as if she had been rehearsing this all her life, instead of being a little kid who had only turned five a few months ago.

And yet—and yet Zumi was sure, as Azula finished her routine by landing in a half-crouch, that her sister had not followed the form laid out in the book, even if by now the pictures were a half-remembered jumble in her mind.

‘It’s not what was in the book,’ she whispered. Her words were almost inaudible, but father whipped his head towards her. He would have heard it even if she had only thought it, she was sure, but he didn’t look displeased. He turned back towards Azula.

‘You reversed it,’ he said.

Azula straightened up. ‘I thought I should use my better arm.’ She waved her left hand in the air. ‘I can do it right-handed if you’d like, father,’ she added, smug.

’That won’t be necessary,’ Ozai said. ‘Zumi will do it right-handed. That is your better hand, isn’t it?’

Zumi was too pleased that he had noticed—most people didn’t, especially since both of them could use either hand; it was only when they were sitting across each other, holding brushes or chopsticks, that they looked like perfect mirror images—to immediately realise what this meant. She couldn’t just copy her sister’s motions.

Well, how hard could it be?

‘I’ll do it right-handed, father,’ she said, and strode towards the middle of the room. Azula had just done the motions in front of her—it was only a matter of flipping them. Her heart fluttered against her ribcage like a frightened bird, then quietened as she took a deep breath. She raised her arms and began: right-handed jab, sideways leg spin, right leg kick—no, _left_ leg—

Her body felt stiff with rust. Line drawings scattered in her mind. She stumbled halfway through her second spin, wobbled for one terrible second on one foot, then went flying, arms splayed, and rammed into a cabinet with a sickening crack. The world flashed scarlet. Something clipped her shoulder, hit her chest, and clattered to the floor.

She opened her eyes.

There was no pain. At least, not yet. She saw only father and Azula’s faces, still despite the wet haze in her eyes. Azula’s face was blank, father’s moved a little in her direction. ‘Are you hurt?’ He didn’t sound very concerned.

‘No,’ Zumi said, and knew it sounded like a whine. Azula’s face remained blank, but Zumi knew it was a mask, and now the pain did come, in her back, her head, her arms, throbbing and dark red.

‘Well, you’ll just have to practice,’ father went on. ‘How odd that your skills diverge so, though. You look alike so much I am sure you keep being mistaken for each other.’ Azula’s eyes widened just a fraction, but Zumi barely noticed. The haze in her eyes had turned stinging and hot, threatening to spill. She was back in the music room, an erhu too big for her propped up on her lap, an edge of its sound box poking her stomach. She had looked with undisguised curiosity at the great wind instruments, hulking and curled like the horns of long-dead beasts, but mother had turned her away with that little wordless shake of her head that meant that something was firmly and irrevocably closed, then handed her the erhu and its bow. She adjusted strings, bow, hands. All Zumi managed to produce was a screech like a cat-owl tied up inside a sack. Azula snickered under her breath.

‘Keep copying your scales, Azula,’ mother said, and gently patted Zumi’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, darling. It took me a long time to learn too—you’ll just have to keep going.’

So she had, the screeching unchanged, until she was sure everybody in the palace could hear it and her world was a bright, hot point of humiliation.

Azula hadn’t snickered again, like she wasn’t snickering now, but she didn’t have to. ‘Come,’ father said, and extended one hand towards her.

She didn’t think before her fingers groped around on the floor at her side, across scattered glass, and fastened around a length of leather-covered metal. Something flared inside her, the same thing that had kept her playing the erhu until her fingers were cramped and stiff. Steel whistled through the air as she swept forward into a crouch and fire burst out of her left hand.

She blinked, and the fire sank down to a little orange ball. She had just—without planning, without thinking—unsheathed a knife, and slashed at the air in front of her while balanced on one foot. She looked down and her ankle wobbled, then she looked back up again, at her father’s face looming above her. The knife remained in her hand, as if it had been welded on, the steel an edge of white light. She couldn’t drop it. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even speak. Her stomach knotted.

But instead of rebuking her, father’s mouth twisted into that same little half-smile he’d shown after Azula had finished her routine.

‘Stand up, my dear,’ he said. Her heart fluttered. Father almost never called them anything other than their names, or, on occasion, “child”. Zumi hauled herself to her feet. Her knees shook a little. Still the knife remained clasped in her hand, held low, the tip pointed up. Azula snuck across the room until she was standing a few steps behind father.

Ozai held Zumi’s wrist and turned the knife to and fro. A thread of light careened down the metal, off a winking ruby eye in the handle. ‘Do you know what this is?’

She tried to say no and only managed a little shake of her head. ‘I do,’ Azula piped up.

‘It’s a dragon dagger,’ father said, and this time, when he tipped the dagger towards his hand, Zumi’s grip slackened. ‘Double-edged, made with the finest steel in all the Fire Nation.’ The hilt was a scaly dragon’s neck, the head so full of small detail Zumi wondered how someone had crafted it. Jewelled, lidless eyes stared at her. ‘From Fire Lord Sozin’s time. Awarded only to those who had earned the title of Dragon. An excellent choice, daughter. You must have been admiring it.’

She hadn’t, really—she was sure she hadn’t noticed it before and that her fingers had only closed on it by pure chance—but she found herself looking straight into her father’s eyes and saying ‘Yes, father.’ A thread of fear rose inside her—she had never lied to her father, she didn’t even think it was _possible_ —but it was drowned by the same heat that had filled her when she’d slashed with the dagger.

‘Good. It seems like you have a skill after all. Weapons too are part of our lineage’s great traditions.’ His tone changed. ‘But they are not for the _weak_. Those who quit at the first hurdle. Those who are afraid. If you wish to be trained, you’ll have to be willing to be work day after day through pain, and sweat, and blood. There will be no whimpering, and no tears, and no complaints.’ He pulled the dagger away, as if to tuck it into the folds of his robe. ‘But maybe you are too young. Not ready yet.’

‘No!’ She almost grabbed at the dagger, but knew that would just make her look like a child. ‘I am ready, father!’

His expression softened a fraction. ‘Give me the sheath.’

She had to shake off a few pieces of glass off the tooled leather before handing it to him. He sheathed the dagger and handed it to her hilt first. ‘Here. You may have it.’

It was only as she took it that she noticed the golden characters near the top of the hilt, shining dully in the light. _Conqueror_.

:=:

Three days later, mother found the dagger. Zumi had been playing with it every day, drawing it and out and sheathing it again, lunging and stabbing at the air. At some point Azula had let out a dramatic sigh and rammed at Zumi’s feet with her own. ‘There,’ Azula said as she did it, ‘and there. That’s where your feet should be. All right? _That_ ’s a proper stance. Now stop embarrassing me.’ Zumi made a face at her sister, but she had to admit it was easier to keep her balance.

She was playing in their room when mother stepped in, but she only noticed when Azula stood up and she turned around, dagger still in her hand. ‘What are you doing?’ Ursa said. She didn’t sound like she’d noticed the dagger yet, even though Zumi was sure it blazed in her hand like a falling star.

‘Nothing,’ Azula said, but mother was already looking down.

‘What is this?’ Ursa said, and snatched the dagger from Zumi’s hands. Zumi almost jumped up to try to get it back, but held herself back at the last second. She—

_father wouldn’t like it_

—didn’t want to look like some little kid trying to get a pie from a high shelf. ‘Father gave it to me,’ she said.

Ursa turned the dagger around in her hands to examine it. ‘It’s real!’

‘Of course it’s real,’ Azula said. ‘What would be the point otherwise?’

‘Don’t say things like that,’ mother said with a frown. ‘Weapons are dangerous. Someone could have been injured.’

‘Father gave it to me,’ Zumi said. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it—father had made it sound like they weren’t supposed to talk about their visit to his study, and she only tattled when Azula was being _really_ annoying—but it seemed to work. Even she could tell mother’s face had just softened a little.

‘Oh, I see. Then it will be a very beautiful heirloom for when you have a household of your own. I think your children will like it very much.’

Zumi didn’t reply. She didn’t realise she was supposed to leave the palace some day. She didn’t want to leave, and didn’t even know where she was supposed to go. And she _certainly_ didn’t want any children. She might not hate being a kid as much as Azula did, but she wanted to be big. Grown-ups didn’t have to practice their calligraphy for hours, and they weren’t punished when they got dirt on a silk dress, and when they did something it wasn’t just pretend, with carved animals and toy teacups. They went to real war meetings and real battlefields.

Well, except mother.

Maybe that was why she wanted to take the knife away.

‘Let’s put it someplace safe, shall we?’ Ursa went on, and turned around to leave the room. Zumi and Azula followed on her heels, down the corridors and into Ursa’s anteroom, where she wrapped up the dagger in a length of red silk, put in inside a lacquered box, and shut it away in a drawer far too high for Zumi to reach. She heard the compartment’s secret mechanism click shut with a sound like a tomb lid falling into place. ‘There,’ mother said. ‘When you’re older, you’ll want to display it on a wall, I’m sure. Won’t that be nice?’ she added, with a pat on Zumi’s head.

‘Come on,’ Azula whispered under her breath, and grabbed Zumi’s hand. The nails dug a little into her palm, and Zumi was sure she was doing it on purpose.

‘Shall we go for a walk in the gardens?’ mother said. ‘Maybe I can tell you about some of the plants. Would you like that?’

‘We’re not finished with our game,’ Azula said.

Zumi looked from her mother to her sister. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We’re still playing.’

:=:

The dagger was on her side of the bed as she slipped under the sheets that night. Mother was right—you really could hurt yourself on it. She sucked the blood droplet off her finger, not minding that she’d cut herself, and shook the scrap of paper off the blade. In the half-light the steel looked bloodless, and beautiful, and the carved dragon’s gaze was the colour of fire wine. She picked up the paper, abandoned on the mattress, and unfolded it.

The message was from father, of course. She still read only haltingly, but he always used all kinds of characters, even ones almost nobody else used any more. For a moment she didn’t bother with the note’s contents. She wanted only to hold it in her hand, tuck it along with the dagger under her pillow, where they’d both be in easy reach of her fingers all night long.

 _You have one last chance at discretion, daughter_ , the note said. _We begin tomorrow. It will be our little secret._

‘I was the one who got it for you, you know,’ Azula said from her side of the bed once Zumi had read the note three more times and finally lay down. ‘After you let mother take it. Father wouldn’t trust anyone else to get it.’ She half-turned towards Zumi. ‘No point in asking _you_ , of course.’

‘Then why did you do it?’ She could feel the slender hardness of the dagger under her pillow. Not just close. Safe.

Azula turned away again. ‘I’m going to sleep now.’

It was only when the room was silent again that Zumi considered what that meant—that Azula had snuck into mother’s rooms and _stolen_ something.

Well, not really stolen, she corrected herself hurriedly. After all, father had given her the dagger, hadn’t he? All of a sudden its weight under her head was no longer cold. It felt like a live coal under her pillow.

She looked at the canopy above her, and wondered if she could have done it herself, and if father would ever ask her.

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

‘Azula!’

Zumi scrambled to her feet. She had nearly fallen down when her sister had crept up on her, her heart an icy lump in her chest, but now all she felt was anger. Azula laughed and darted down the corridor, a darker shape in the shadows.

And it _was_ Azula, of course—she certainly hadn’t felt the too-sweet smell of something starting to rot, and when she’d yelped and grabbed the thing touching her, she’d felt her sister’s warm flesh, not skin and fabric soft and powdery with age.

‘Get back here!’ Zumi said, and raced down the passage, towards the small rectangle of light. ‘Or I’ll tell—’

_Who?_

Azula giggled again and the rectangle began to close. _No!_ Fear flashed inside Zumi again, slowing her until she was moving through molasses. She was going to be locked inside the secret tunnel, rattling around in the palace’s hollow skeleton, scratching at the walls. She was going to be locked in with _it_ , and it was stalking her even now, scurrying up the steps, slithering on her heels—

She dove into the bedroom, hitting Azula’s body so hard the air was knocked out of her chest. They stumbled and rolled onto the floor. Something hard cracked Zumi’s side. She opened her eyes to see the wooden screen wobble once, twice, and finally fall with a creak of wood. ‘Watch—’ But it was too late. The screen whooshed towards the floor, hit the edge of a table, and finally landed with a crack so loud Zumi was sure everybody in the palace heard it. The vase on the table pitched forward and crashed to the floor. Its lid rolled towards the two of them. It finally spun to a halt with a porcelain hum.

Azula was the first to get up. She prodded the lid with the tip of her toes and picked a wooden splinter off her sleeve. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said.

‘You were going to lock me in there!’ Zumi said as she got to her feet. Her knees throbbed a little, and she was streaked with dust. She was sure she had even swallowed some, and she had probably torn a hole in her clothes. At least Azula’s headpiece was sitting askew—though the satisfaction was thin and short-lived. It winked out as soon as she looked at the shattered screen lying on the floor, the painted vase with thick black cracks in its belly.

‘I was only _joking_ ,’ Azula said, as she slid the panel in the wall shut. You’d never notice it if you didn’t already know it was there. ‘Besides, you can obviously open it from the inside, dum-dum. What would be the point otherwise?’

Zumi couldn’t think of any appropriate reply, so she just let out a grumble as she wiped dust off her face. ‘What are we going to do about this?’

Azula glanced at the ruin on the floor. ‘It was _your_ fault.’

‘You started it!’

‘You finished it.’ She stepped around the screen and kneeled by the vase. ‘Let’s just turn it around. Nobody pays any attention to these things anyway.’

‘That’s your plan?’ Zumi looked down at the fallen screen. Yes, maybe they could prop it up again.

Maybe they could pretend a platypus-bear had clawed at it.

‘I don’t need a plan,’ Azula said breezily. ‘I just need someone else to take the blame.’

‘Don’t—’

‘Girls, are you ready? It’s time for— My goodness, what happened here?’

Zumi looked up, her heart dropping down to some place by her feet. Mother was standing at the bedroom door, flanked by two maids carrying folded fabric. One of the maids’ mouth quivered, then froze, her eyes still demurely downcast.

‘How did this happen?’ Ursa stepped into the bedroom, slippered feet approaching the wreck. Zumi couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She just remained frozen in place, cold sweat pearling her forehead. Mother turned to Azula, who was still kneeling by the broken vase. ‘Zumi, look at you. I told you you should be careful when you’re playing with your little sister.’

That released Zumi’s tongue. ‘I’m Zumi,’ she said, then added, limply, ‘We were playing. The screen fell.’

‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry,’ mother said, then turned to her, her tone displeased again. ‘But look at the two of you. You’re filthy, and look at the mess you’ve made. You should be old enough to play on your own.’ She hauled Azula to her feet, then grabbed Zumi’s arm. ‘You’re young ladies now, I thought I could leave you alone without you breaking things. Do you know how old that vase is? How precious?’

‘It was the screen, mother,’ Azula said in her sweetest tone. Zumi recognised it as the voice she always used when she wanted to fool a grown-up; Azula always said you just needed to sound as stupid as most grown-ups thought kids were. Zumi had tried it once, but she sounded like her mouth was full of jumping beans instead of honey, and of course it hadn’t worked. ‘I don’t think it was built properly.’

Mother frowned. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have touched it,’ she said, and soon the pair of them had been hauled into one of the bathing rooms, stripped, rinsed, and dunked into the large tub sunken in the middle of the floor.

It was only when their attendant turned her back on them to fetch a wooden comb that Azula spoke again. A curtain of steam rose between them, and Zumi’s hair floated around her, dark and slippery, like seaweed. ‘I wonder what we were supposed to be doing now.’

‘You didn’t find anyone to blame,’ Zumi said, knees pulled close to her chin. The water was hot but a ripple of cold passed under her skin. They would probably only be given some rice porridge before being sent to bed, and who knew how many hours they’d have to spend copying characters without being allowed outside, but the prospective punishment didn’t seem to phase Azula in the slightest.

‘Which is funny, considering it was all your fault.’

‘I should have told mother it was _your_ fault.’

Azula scoffed. ‘She can’t even really tell us apart.’

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

**TBC…**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** Clearly, in this universe Ozai knows that if you want to get the Angels together, you can’t go around delegating. ;) Seriously now, obviously this is my interpretation, but I do think that if Zuko were a girl Ozai would have an easy entry point to manipulate her, by driving a wedge between her and people wishing to shoehorn her into a much narrower idea of what a ~~proper lady~~ should be like, and while Ozai being Ozai means he’ll probably go all “I’m bored, let’s you and her fight” at some point, for now he’s quite happy to have two faithful little weapons for the price of one. And while Azula was never going to have a sibling relationship that’s all sweetness and light and rainbow Care Bears or whatever, I think she’s shrewd enough to quickly grasp the fact that, as should become increasingly clear in upcoming chapters, from the PoV of a lot of people, if she has a brother, she has to prove herself as being better than him, so his failure benefits her… but if she has a sister, another girl’s failure reflects on her, so sibling rivalry aside, she has an interest in making sure her sister doesn’t let the side down. Especially when you consider the fact that she and Zuko were hardly at constant DEFCON 1 in the canon in any case—so this is the world in which their interests coincide most of the time (at least for now).
> 
> The bit with Zumi thinking for a moment that the secret corridors stretch on forever was somewhat inspired by Mark Z Danielewski’s _House of Leaves_. There’s no direct quotes or anything, but I thought I ought to mention it anyway.


	2. Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** I’m not even going to attempt to apologise for the appalling lateness of this chapter. I did have a lot of RL commitments, but I have a more predictable schedule now and hopefully future chapters will be finished at a much more reasonable pace! Anyway, thank you all for your interest in the first chapter of this story, and I hope you will enjoy this chapter as well. One of my readers brought up Zumi’s physical appearance, and I thought I should clarify that, as she and Azula age, it does become easier to tell them apart. However, they still look a lot alike, because honestly all the women in Ta Min’s line that we see seem to have been decanted from the same clone vat. (Hey, maybe that was what lay behind Azula’s breakdown; it wasn’t schizophrenia, it was the Hive Mother implant becoming active. ;))
> 
> Ozai’s training methods in this chapter are a bit… well, Ozai-esque, but nothing goes above a T rating.

**Chapter Two: Secrets**

                                                                                                    

A fireball hovered in the air in front of her. Zumi could feel the air hum on her skin like a vibrating string. Raindrops hung in the air, strung around the pavilion’s columns and roof edges. For a knife-edge second she could see it all: the motion of her limbs under her clothes, the glint of the grey light on her dagger, the way one of her sister’s bangs was caught in mid-swing, like a wagging tail. She could see the trajectory of Azula’s strike, the slight leaning to the left that told her sister’s next move.

Time snapped. Rain hammered the pavilion again and the fireball whooshed just a hair’s breadth away from her arm. She twisted around and dodged Azula’s left-hand jab, but everything was happening too fast. She barely managed to bend the thrust of flame back towards her sister, and when she lunged forward, blade-point held low, Azula spun out of the way and into a lunge. Step, parry, block—Zumi struggled to keep up. She could feel every ache, every drop of sweat, every strain of her lungs. She was pushed back inch by inch, towards one of the pavilion’s sides. She managed to block one of Azula’s spinning kicks, but her sister quickly jumped back and used the leverage to launch herself forward.

A thump in Zumi’s ribcage. Time had slowed down again—that must be how she knew that Azula was about to deliver a fight-ending blow, a strike of fire to the chest that would knock Zumi to the floor, singed and defeated. Heat rushed through her veins. With a noise in her throat that sounded very far away, she half-spun sideways as the jet of flame burst between them, and drove her palm and blade into it, pushing it back as her knife drew a blazing arc. Azula stumbled back with a yelp—

_she’s going to fall_

—tottered on one foot, and dropped to her knees.

Zumi cooled immediately. This might be the first time she’d won against Azula, but her sister was on the floor on all fours, head low, one hand pressed on her side. She must be really hurt, Zumi thought with a pang of guilt, and stepped over towards her. ‘Are you—’

The hit came so fast she barely saw it. She went down in a split-second, and hit the floor tiles so hard the air was smacked out of her lungs. Azula stood over her, one foot on Zumi’s ribcage.

‘I win,’ Azula said.

‘Enough.’

The rule was that their sparring wasn’t over until someone was flat on the ground, but they both knew it wasn’t really over until father said so. Azula drew back. Zumi got up, pulled by his voice like a puppet on a string, picked up her dagger on her way up. She had let it clatter across the floor when Azula had knocked her down. She felt her face grow hot with embarrassment as she sheathed it and glanced at her sister, unwilling to look at father just yet. Azula’s clothes were as smooth as if they’d just come off a hot press, not a thread or a hair out of place. She hadn’t even broken a sweat. Zumi was sure her own clothes were a mess, and her skin felt slippery.

‘Come here,’ father said, and the two of them walked up to and kneeled in front of his seat at the back of the pavilion. His head turned a fraction towards Zumi. ‘Why did you lose?’

‘She cheated!’ She sank back down, suddenly fascinated by the pattern in the floor tiles. ‘She cheated,’ she repeated, subdued, and felt her sister snort.

‘Of course she did,’ Ozai said, and Zumi looked up at him. The ache of effort in her muscles receded a little. ‘This is not a game of pai sho. This is not a race in which you get a nice little bowknot for second place. You either do whatever it takes to win, or you resign yourself to losing. Because—’ He steepled his fingers and his gaze slid from Zumi to Azula and back again. ‘—in life, that is the only score anyone is keeping. No one cares if you worked ten hard years for your skills or if you are a prodigy who acquired them in an instant. Winning. Losing. It is that simple.’ He lowered his hands and turned to Azula. ‘So what did _you_ do wrong?’

‘I—’ she stammered. Azula never stammered, and Zumi couldn’t help but feel a dark little drop of satisfaction.

Maybe that was why she spoke, every word heated like a burning ember. ‘It’s because she chea—’

Her father’s gaze turned to her. She fell silent, cooling. ‘I am sorry, father,’ she said, eyes downcast.

‘No. Never apologise. If you are right, it is a sign of weakness, and you shouldn’t be wrong in the first place. You let everybody see you cheating,’ he said to Azula, in a voice like a steel band. ‘The only good trap is the one nobody sees you build. Do whatever you have to to achieve victory. Never get caught doing something that leaves your victory in doubt.’

‘Yes, father,’ Azula said, a thin little smile in the corner of her lips.

‘Zumi. Get up.’

She nearly stumbled as she got to her feet, her muscles suddenly a tired jelly. Her father beckoned her to his side. She hurried towards him, sure that she was covered in grime and sweat, and stopped awkwardly, not knowing how to stand or where to look. She was used to the elaborate rules governing the positions of superiors and subordinates—where to stand, how to sit, when to raise. It was one of the few things she had learned faster than Azula.

But then again, these lessons of theirs were hardly conventional.

‘What was _your_ mistake, daughter?’

Her gaze slid over the golden dragons climbing the pavilion’s pillars. The rain had slowed to a drizzle. ‘I will try harder, father. I will practice even more and—’

‘Be quiet.’ He got up, fast enough she could feel the motion of air. ‘Your skills are not unworthy of training. You can use the blade and the flame together, at least.’

_Not unworthy_. She cradled the words to her heart, precious jewels.

‘But you are still refusing to understand the most basic,’ he went on, circling her. ‘Where does firebending come from?’

‘The breath,’ Azula piped up. Zumi said the same, a beat behind.

‘Quite, my dears.’ He grabbed Zumi’s wrist, so fast she nearly gasped, and splayed his other hand on the spot just below her heart. Heat radiated from his fingers. ‘Right here. Breathe.’

Zumi drew in a breath, as deep as possible. She was sure she could hear her lungs rattle, her ribs flap about like paper fans. She held the breath until her chest ached. Ozai released her. She exhaled, a tumble of air.

‘No.’ Her father shook his head, and the heat that still lingered in Zumi’s chest sank for good. ‘You are failing to grasp the fundamentals.’ She nodded, fervently. If the fundamentals were within reach, she would grab them two-handed. ‘You use your muscles to fight with a blade, and so you think that the same principle applies to firebending. It does not. Your fire does not become stronger if you breathe in deeper. It does not grow hotter if you flex your arms harder. You have a little sun inside you, buried deep just below your heart. This is where firebending comes from. You will hear from others that firebending is your chi mixed with air. But that is merely mechanics. In truth, firebending comes from the will. The ability and power to impose it upon the world. What do you want? What drives you? That is where firebending comes from.’

‘Oh.’ Zumi said, but father wasn’t finished yet. She was a little relieved that he didn’t seem to be expecting an answer.

‘Reach into that bag,’ he said. Zumi looked at the floor next to his seat. She hadn’t even noticed the satchel before.

She kneeled, fumbled with the fastenings for a few seconds—her fingers felt like they’d turned into half-cooked dough—and pulled out a ball of fabric.

At first she wasn’t sure what it was. The fabric strips were too small to be a proper piece of clothing, and there were too many of them for them to be beach clothes. Here and there they were sewn onto bits of rubber—Zumi knew you got that from the sap of a certain tree, but she’d never seen a layer this thin—and sturdy fastenings dangled in all directions.

‘Come on, put it on,’ father said, a little impatient.

Zumi looked at the tangle in her hands. It had so many holes it must have been designed for a fire squid’s tentacles. She glanced at her father, and a drop of cold swelled in her chest. He was looking at her as though the thing’s use were self-evident. Before she could slip her head into the first available hole, though, Azula had sidled to her side and jammed her elbow towards one of the openings. In a few moments Zumi was wearing the thing, which was a bit like a tunic made from some huge spiderfly’s web, fastenings trailing down her back. She felt herself blush; it was actually pretty obvious how to put it on once you figured it out.

‘Good,’ Ozai said. ‘Now come here.’

She edged even closer to him. He didn’t really like touching other people, so when his hands moved towards her she startled, thinking she was about to hold her. But instead he grabbed the fastenings. ‘Breathe,’ he said.

There was no time to take even the smallest breath. The garment crushed her chest, dug into her back. All she could do was let out a strangled cry, and even that sounded a cricket’s sigh.

‘Don’t try to fight it,’ father said, and drew the fastenings a little tighter. Tears prickled Zumi’s eyes. ‘The pain is nothing. The pain is a distraction for the weak, and you are one of the strong. Aren’t you?’

_Yes. Yes_. She didn’t speak, though. She was sure that if she tried, all she’d be able to produce would be a sob. At her side, Azula was wearing a little smirk, and despite the pain, despite the tightness, Zumi felt heat grow inside her, a kind she’d felt before only dimly. It was something alien, something that floated placidly in her stomach, untouched by her discomfort, the garment squeezing the breath out of her lungs.

_A little sun_. She felt its rays move in and out even though her breath had been crushed to a trickle. Azula’s smirk irritated her, but the sun made her less afraid.

‘Breathe,’ father said again, and tightened the garment another fraction. ‘Breathe.’

Despite everything, air drew into her lungs, sank deeper still. There were more tears, enough to cloud her vision, but through the haze and the agony she could still see the little sun, flaring bigger like a hearth that had just been fed fresh coals. _I can do it. I can do it, father._

‘Light the lamps,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at them. Don’t think about it. Do it.’

She couldn’t move, and she couldn’t think. Another time, she would have to look at the lamps, to think about the oil inside them. But now all she did was push the sun’s heat towards the pavilion’s edges. The lamps came to life, a trickle of dark red flame at first, then a higher and hotter flame, until for a second the pavilion was ringed with plumes of nearly white heat.

‘Control it.’

The pain gripped her again, harder. This time she was sure she was going to keel over, a flopping fish gasping, and the last thing she’d hear would be her sister’s mocking laughter. The anger pushed the pain away, made the sun flare again. The flames rose, dimmed, settled.

‘Good,’ father said, and loosened the ties. Zumi stumbled. A rush of air filled her lungs, making her ribs ache. The flames whooshed again before spending themselves. ‘Still a flaw there at the end,’ father went on, but he didn’t sound completely displeased. ‘Next time you will be perfect. Now take that off.’

:=:

Her body shook as the two of them walked into the gardens after father dismissed them. She wondered if there were going to be marks on her flesh; her chest and back ached with the keenness of a fresh bruise. At least her arms and legs only felt a little wobbly, like they always did after a training session.

‘You weren’t completely terrible with the dragon’s coils,’ Azula said as she leaned down to rip up a blade of grass. She straightened up and twirled it between her fingers. ‘Of course, I did it all perfectly the first time.’

‘You did that too?’ Zumi almost felt father’s praise grow a little duller. But he had told her she could use the blade; Azula didn’t get to do that.

‘I haven’t needed it in ages, that thing is for babies,’ her sister said with a dismissive wave of her hand, and burned the blade of grass away, then wiped the smear of ash off her fingers. ‘But it does make everything… sharper, doesn’t it?’

Zumi didn’t answer. For a second there, in the middle of the sun, things hadn’t really felt sharp. They’d felt almost… peaceful. But no, that was really stupid. She pushed the thought away.

Azula elbowed her. Mother was coming towards them. Zumi tried to compose herself, but she was sure mother would see the sweat right away, her rumpled clothes, even spot the dagger burning inside her sleeve.

Her sister, of course, looked like she’d just been bathed and dressed in freshly laundered clothes.

‘There you are,’ Ursa said instead. ‘What were you doing?’ She leaned down towards Zumi and began straightening out her clothes, used a handkerchief to dab at her daughter’s face. ‘Look at you, Zumi—you look like you’ve been tumbling about in the dirt. You really should take better care of yourself.’ Her tone was not unkind, just vaguely disappointed, but Zumi had to make herself not squirm out of her grip; mother was handling her like a wolfbat worrying a pup.

‘Father is teaching us to play pai sho,’ Azula said innocently once Ursa released Zumi. ‘Today he taught us how the Five-Fold Flame hand.’

Mother nodded. ‘That’s wonderful. Come along now, we have just received a letter from Uncle Iroh, and afterwards Lady Ty Fen and Governor Rao’s wife are paying us a visit.’

Zumi brightened. That meant Ty Lee and Mai were coming over to play and that meant—well, it meant that it wouldn’t just be her and Azula all the time. She felt her face grow hot and hoped against hope that Azula didn’t spot it. Mother was always telling them about the importance of family and reading stories where the moral was always about sisterly feelings and sisterly duty. Father never brought any of that up, but he did talk a lot about how each of them would be judged by the other, how the two of them were a chain and a chain was only as strong as its weakest link, which Zumi always understood to mean she was letting her sister down.

But sometimes she really wondered about how things would be like without Azula. She couldn’t even remember life without her younger sister, even though she knew there had been a year and a half when she’d had mother and father to herself.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to not have her around, just for one day. ‘Liar,’ she whispered at Azula under her breath, as though the word had been pushed out by her thoughts.

‘What, do you want to tell her the truth?’ Azula whispered back.

That was a good point, Zumi had to admit, and they were both silent as mother shepherded them back into the palace.

Uncle Iroh’s letter was all about how the siege of Ba Sing Se was going: well, apparently, even if the letter was sparse in details. Azula had told her once that was due to military secrets, which had made Zumi picture a row of generals whispering into each others’ ears as though they were in a game of Pass the Message. It didn’t matter, in any case; she and Azula had played at besieging Ba Sing Se using their toy palace as a stand-in for the city, and father had given them books about Ba Sing Se and later had quizzed them on its military history, political and strategic importance, and weak points.

‘“I hope you all may see it someday”,” mother read on, ‘“if we don’t burn it to the ground first”.’

That got a big laugh from everyone, even from Azula, who never laughed at normal jokes. Once Zumi’s laughter had trailed away, she felt her chest swell. Would the siege still be going on by the time she was old enough to fight? She was going to be ten this year, which meant at least six years before she was allowed _anywhere_ , and it would be an even longer time before she could be a general. Maybe they’d even run out of war before she was old enough to go with father into battle—but cousin Lu Ten wasn’t really all that old and we was allowed to go, so maybe it was different when your father was a Fire Prince.

Mother kept reading the letter. ‘“Until then, I hope the girls enjoy this gift—”’ At that, Azula mouthed “the girls” and made a face like she’d just swallowed a scorpion-bee dipped in lime juice. Zumi had to bite the side of her mouth to keep herself quiet. ‘“—of two new friends.”’ A servant approached carrying a tray, and uncovered it to reveal a pair of dolls, one wearing green trimmed with yellow, the other wearing yellow trimmed with green. ‘“They wear the latest fashion for Earth Kingdom girls.’”

Zumi picked up her doll. The face was made from porcelain smooth as an egg’s shell, daubed here and there with colour, and the hair looked like real hair, but she couldn’t help but feel a hot pebble of disappointment, low in her stomach. She would have liked something from the siege, maybe even just a chunk of rock blasted from the Walls. That’s what father would have brought back to them. Maybe a flag from a surrendering general, its edges still singed. And he wouldn’t call them “the girls” when he gave it to them. He would use the words he had used less than a handful of times, when he was particularly pleased with them.

My little dragons.

A few feet away Azula held the doll as though it were a dead elephant-rat, then turned back to mother.

‘If Uncle doesn't make it back from war, then dad would be next in line to be Fire Lord, wouldn't he?’

The words startled Zumi, but she said nothing.

‘Azula, we don't speak that way. It would be awful if Uncle Iroh didn't return,’ mother said as she rolled up the letter. ‘And besides, Fire Lord Azulon is a picture of health.’ The servant glided to her side. ‘Now, put your toys away, it’s time for tea. And I will have no more of that talk, young lady.’

Azula rolled her eyes but she remained silent as they made their way to one of the tea rooms and mother and the other two women exchanged greetings at great length before they all sat down. Mai sat to one corner, next to her mother, and remained perfectly still, occasionally nibbling at a tea cake or a sweet roll. On the other side of the table, Ty Lee was being ignored by her mother as she made a mess bouncing food around. Zumi squirmed in her seat, the smell of lotus tea making her drowsy, the seams of her clothes digging uncomfortably into her flesh. Finally, after their mothers had discussed the weather, their health, and their families, the four of them were dismissed, released to roam free in the gardens. The rain clouds had scattered, and the sun blazed again.

‘I thought I was going to be sick with boredom,’ Azula said as she swaggered down one of the paths.

‘Maybe you should have,’ Mai said. ‘Then we’d have been dismissed even earlier.’ They all looked at her, unsure of whether or not to laugh. It was always hard to tell when Mai was making a joke; her voice always sounded the same, flat and dusty like a hoarse cricket. Mai shrugged. Zumi did the same, Azula turned away. Ty Lee giggled.

‘What should we do now?’ Azula said, imperiously, as the four of them ambled across the grass and finally came to a halt under a tree. ‘Maybe we can play a game.’

‘How come you said all those things about Uncle Iroh?’

Zumi—

_had wanted_

—was sure she hadn’t meant to speak until the words were out of her mouth, but maybe they had been simmering inside her, pooling on her skin like the tea steam and the faint sheen of sweet from their practice.

A frown rippled lightning-fast across Azula’s face, then her expression smoothed. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I was right there,’ Zumi said, unable to keep a note of irritation off her voice. ‘It happened an hour ago.’

‘Oh, _that_ ,’ Azula said with a dismissive hand-wave and leaned back against the tree. She started lighting the tips of her fingers, then winking them out. ‘I was just telling the truth. It’s a fact that if Uncle Iroh dies, father becomes the Crown Prince, isn’t it?’

‘No, Cousin Lu Ten becomes the Crown Prince,’ Zumi said. It was true, but she couldn’t help but feel like when father asked her a question and she gave the wrong answer.

‘Fine,’ Azula said, and stopped playing with her firebending. Zumi glanced at Mai and Ty Lee, who stood to one side, watching. Mai seemed uninterested and unimpressed, but she always looked uninterested and unimpressed. Ty Lee’s gaze darted back and forth, between Zumi and Azula. ‘If Uncle Iroh dies and Cousin Lu Ten also dies, father becomes the Crown Prince.’ She looked up. ‘Why do you care, anyway? Do you like Uncle Teapot better than father? Maybe you wanted those stupid little dolls to arrive earlier, so you could have played with them instead of—’

‘Shut up.’

‘So you must think father wouldn’t be a great Fire Lord.’

‘No!’ The denial nearly came with an accidental burst of flame. Father was the smartest person Zumi knew, the best firebender. To doubt it was like doubting the sun rose in the East.

‘Then I don’t see what you’re complaining about,’ Azula said, breezy. Mai had sat down, her chin propped on her folded hands. Ty Lee was still standing. ‘I mean, it’s not like mother would like you any better than she does me if she knew what you get up to. You just admitted she told me off for telling the truth.’

‘Well, you don’t have to say it,’ Zumi said, a little flustered.

‘Why not?’ Azula said, scorn dripping from her voice. ‘That’s a dumb thing to say, _don’t you think_?’

Neither Mai nor Ty Lee said or did anything, but for a second Zumi was sure that she heard a titter of laughter. Eyes watching from behind screens, snickers hidden behind hands, mocking whispers disguised in the turn of a head.

Then the answer struck her. She could almost see it floating in front of her, like fire writing. ‘Because father said so.’

Azula turned very still. ‘It’s all part of—strategy,’ Zumi went on, stumbling but gathering steam. ‘You should never let other people find out everything you know, or everything you think, or everything you plan to do. “Know yourself, and cloak the knowledge from your enemies”,’ she recited, with only a little hesitation.

‘It’s “veil”,’ Azula said, and stepped away from the tree. ‘And I don’t think mother would like you calling her an enemy. She might end up washing your tongue,’ she added acidly.

It didn’t matter. Zumi had won for once, and she could feel it.

Ty Lee jumped up. ‘I’ve been learning how to do cartwheels and somersaults—do you want to see?’

Zumi drew a breath. There had been something in the air, but it had cleared now, like a rain cloud melted away by the wind. ‘Sure.’

Ty Lee took a few steps back, ran across the grass, and spun into the air in a cloud of pink fabric. She tumbled forward, landed on her hands, and swept onwards in a cartwheel. ‘Ta-da!’ she said with a giggle as she straightened up, a few strands of hair loose across her forehead, her braid askew.

Azula snorted. ‘That doesn’t look that hard, I bet—’ Her mouth snapped shut. When she spoke again her tone had changed, and she threw her sister a sharp gaze Zumi didn’t quite understand. ‘I bet we could all do it if you taught us.’

‘Oh, it’s really easy! You just have to think of your feet as your hands.’ Ty Lee hurried to Azula’s side and pulled on her sleeve. ‘Come on!’

‘I think Zumi should go first,’ Azula said, sweet as sun-warmed honey. ‘She’s the eldest. Or maybe Mai, she looks really bored.’

‘I’m fine,’ Mai said, an impassive effigy in a tomb.

Zumi sighed. ‘Show me, Ty Lee.’

She landed on her knee on her first cartwheel, but even Azula’s burst of laughter didn’t feel too bad. She rubbed her knee, got up, wiped the dirt from her hands. Ty Lee gave her an encouraging look. ‘You’ll get it right the next time, I’m sure!’ she said. ‘You put your hands in the right place and everything.’

‘Do you want to see a dead body?’

They all turned towards Azula. ‘A real dead body?’ Mai’s tone was the usual rasp, but even she couldn’t disguise a sparkle of interest in her eyes.

‘No, a paper dead body,’ Azula drawled. ‘Of course a real dead body. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.’

They all nodded. Azula lead them across the gardens, around the pond where a handful of baby turtle-ducks dotted the water, and into a copse of trees in the shadow of a palace spire. The shrubbery had been arranged in imitation of wildness, moss allowed to hang from the trees. When they all entered the copse, Azula in the lead, even the air smelled green, a damp, vegetable smell.

Azula pulled a curtain of willow branches aside and another smell entirely hit Zumi’s nose. Nothing in the palace was ever allowed to go bad, but the stink reminded her a little of ripened bean curd, pickled fish, fruit that had been allowed to soften into mush.

‘Here it is,’ Azula said.

Mai leaned forward to take a look. ‘Gross,’ she said, the smallest note of excitement in her voice. Zumi edged towards the bush so she could see. At her side, Ty Lee let out a small squeak, but didn’t stop staring, either.

On a small grove on the ground, half-tucked under a shrub, there was a small pile of feathers smeared with white. The white wriggled a little, and Zumi realised it wasn’t dust or sand, but dozens of maggots. She felt her stomach contract and a stinging wave rise into her throat, but she kept looking too. This close, the smell was almost solid.

‘I thought you said it was a real dead body,’ Mai said. ‘Not a bird.’

‘You can’t have dead people in the palace,’ Azula said, and stepped away from the bird. She didn’t look bothered by it at all, but Zumi noticed she was breathing through her mouth. ‘Someone would notice.’

‘What kind of bird is it?’ Ty Lee said, and took a tentative step towards it. ‘It’s all... fuzzy.’ Her face furrowed in concentration. ‘Fluffy? Poofy?’

Azula shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The kind that’s dead. Birds fly in from outside all the time, and when they drop dead the servants clear them away. But they missed this one. I bet that in a month’s time it’ll just be a skeleton. Just some bones and some feathers, maybe. You know, ages ago they used to keep cat-gators in the palace grounds. I bet they cleared all the dead birds away. I wish we still had cat-gators. Turtle-ducks are so dull. Anyway, I think we should come back here every week, see what’s happening to it. All those maggots weren’t there a while ago. I bet the beetle-flies lay their eggs in the flesh and then they hatch.’ She seemed to find the idea fascinating.

Zumi stared at the bird, one open eye sunken into the skull; it looked like it was staring back, still surprised that something this undignified had happened to it. She had never really thought about death, not even when they went to the shrine of the ancestors to pray. Death was ashes entombed in some catacomb out of sight, a picture, incense sticks. ‘We should burn it,’ she said.

Azula snorted. ‘What would be the point of _that_?’

‘What do you care? You’re not even interested in animals.’ Azula always wandered away when they were at Ember Island and Zumi wanted to see the anemones in the low-tide pools. Either that, or she threw a stone into the water so it would turn murky.

‘I like finding things out. Learning is so important, isn’t it?’

Zumi’s gaze fell on the blind, open eye again. ‘We can’t just leave it out here. It’s just... bad,’ she finish limply.

‘Why do you care?’ Azula punctuated her words with a shrug. ‘You laughed with mother and me when she read that joke about Ba Sing Se burning to the ground. What do you think that means? All those Earth Kingdom peasants would be dead like this. A bit more charred, I suppose,’ she added.

‘I...’ She had never thought about it like that. She tried to picture a person lying like that, limbs askew, flesh sunk, beetle-fly maggots crawling on their skin, eyes turned a sickly yellow, staring without seeing. The thought turned her mouth dry. But they didn’t kill—

_if we don’t burn it to the ground_

—helpless people, they killed soldiers, and that was only if they didn’t surrender. And besides, when the War was over, everything would be better. One world, united under the golden banner of the flame. It was so clean when she played war with Azula, just figurines being knocked to the floor. When she imagined being a general. Paper dolls burned to ash in a second.

She looked up. ‘Don’t you want to see what it looks like when it burns?’

Azula considered this for a second. ‘You know, that actually sounds interesting. We could make a little pyre, like when they burn a dead person.’

Azula was the one who dragged the rotting bird from under the bush. Ty Lee had gathered a brace of rocks, Mai just one. ‘I didn’t look very hard,’ she said as she put it on the ground. ‘Can we go do… anything, after?’

‘I’ll let you play with my toys,’ Azula said, then her stare swept over the others. ‘Before we do it, we should swear to each other. You know, sisters.’

‘We’re already sisters,’ Zumi said.

‘I don’t mean like that, dum-dum.’ She lit a white flame in her thumb. ‘I’m going to put a mark on all of us, and then we all have to swear we’ll keep each other’s secrets for ever and ever, and if any of us breaks the promise, the mark will swallow her up in flames until she’s nothing but a pile of ash.’

‘Wow.’ Mai’s voice was as flat and dry as a salt desert.

Azula’s face furrowed with anger, smoothed. ‘Are you scared?’

‘No.’ Mai pulled her sleeve up, exposed her wrist and a hand balled into a fist. ‘Do it.’ Zumi had never seen her quite so... lively.

Ty Lee jumped up in front of her. ‘Oh, can I go first? Where did you learn about all this, Azula? Is it really true?’

‘Sure,’ Azula said indulgently, and pressed her thumb’s tip on Ty Lee’s wrist. There was a hiss, the smell of seared flesh. Ty Lee yelped.

‘It really hurts!’ she said, rubbing her wrist, her eyes wide.

‘Don’t be a baby, Ty Lee,’ Azula said, and pressed her thumb to her own wrist. A tremor ran through her shoulders but her face remained still, her voice even. ‘See? Who’s next?’

Zumi was the last. She held Azula’s gaze as her sister burned the little fingertip-shaped mark into her skin, but she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from making a sound, to keep herself absolutely still as her world narrowed down to a bright point of pain for a few interminable seconds. Don’t be a baby. Azula had been right; besides, it was only a little worse than all the times they’d got burned during practice. Azula drew her hand away. For a moment, all Zumi could think of was how desperately she wanted a chunk of ice. She looked down at her wrist, where there was now a circle of angry, blistered red.

‘Forever and ever,’ Azula said, and held up her wrist so they could all press their hands together.

In the end, it was Zumi who lit up the pyre. The dead bird was damp, still soggy with the fluids of decay. Still her fireball was strong enough to wreath it in fire in seconds. A few stray maggots wriggled down the rocks, took refuge in the grass. Feathers curled and withered, flesh shrank. In a few moments there wasn’t even any stench of rotting flesh anymore, only the smell of smoke and charred meat. Only flames and ash.

It was clean, Zumi thought, then anger—

_at her_

—flashed inside her; her fingertips worried her burn. They were doing the right thing, in the War. It was necessary, and it was _clean_. The smell of smoke filled her throat, stung her eyes. She had to keep herself from coughing. In the pyre, the dead bird’s skull crumbled down, a chunk of powdery coal.

_Forever and ever._

:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:

**TBC…**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** We’ll be starting with the action in earnest in the next chapter, but I do hope you’ve found these two chapters interesting in terms of the characters’ dynamics and interactions… I feel this AU premise is the kind where the changes are small at first but eventually snowball into something huge, hence all this set-up, and I of course hope you agree with me enough to keep reading! Oh, and Azula didn’t kill the dead bird, in case anyone is wondering about that—she doesn’t care about live animals, as far as she’s concerned, they’re just irrelevant background elements, like rocks, but she’s just gruesomely fascinated with death and decomposition, which, as a biologist, of course strikes me as perfectly normal child behaviour. ;)


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